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If I ever do a murder mystery, I'm going to have the murderer confess on Page 147, and have the detective spend the next hundred pages humming.
James D. Macdonald said:I'd go for re-readablity. I mean, people re-read books, right? And the book is totally "spoiled" for them, right?
If all that your book has going for it is a surprise twist ending, that's not much to hang your shingle on.
James D. Macdonald said:I'd go for re-readablity. I mean, people re-read books, right? And the book is totally "spoiled" for them, right?
If all that your book has going for it is a surprise twist ending, that's not much to hang your shingle on.
James D. Macdonald said:Yeah, in the world of movies, Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects would be re-watchable because the twist ending isn't all they have going for them.
On the other hand ... The Village. The twist ending is all that movie has. It's not a watch-again.
If you've read the whole discussion in that part of the thread, you know that not everyone who's knowledgeable about such questions thinks "She [verb], then [verb]" is correct. I don't want to start that fight again, but I still don't like such sentences.Roger J Carlson said:In my novel, I originally had many sentences of this type: "She did this, then that."
Am I the only "12-year old" who giggles every time I read this post?Galoot said:By the way, congratulations on your third ball, Jim.
brinkett said:Am I the only "12-year old" who giggles every time I read this post?
On Topic: The "and then" thing. Since reading the posts about it, I consider my use of "and then" more seriously than I did before, but I still use it when it feels right. Sometimes the sentence just doesn't feel right to me if I use just "and" or just "then", but don't ask me to explain why.
It starts up here with a comment by Uncle Jim:Christine N. said:Ok, I missed the "and then" discussion, and I can't find it. Someone summarize, please? I find myself using this, well, not often, but enough.
"She brought the soup tureen to the table, then ran back off to the kitchen." for example.
Then, reph made a comment on "and then," and UJ replied and the subject was off and running. It looked like it had petered out for a bit, but reph and UJ got into a bit of an entanglement. And then (ha! joke! don't kill me!) multiple other people weighed in, and there was some intelligent discussion and a few hurt feelings, and UJ wrote some more and the discussion gradually turned to grammar in general (although the occasional "and then" reference pops up over the next couple pages) and the whole thing finally does peter out.I have lots of little idiosyncracies; for example, I dislike the word cluster "and then." "And" means two events happened at the same time, "then" means they happened sequentially. "And then" means ... what? I'll change that group to "and" or "then."
One of these days I'm going to start a multiple choice Learn Writing with Uncle Jim poll. It'll have "writer personality test" questions on it like this:reph said:If you've read the whole discussion in that part of the thread, you know that not everyone who's knowledgeable about such questions thinks "She [verb], then [verb]" is correct. I don't want to start that fight again, but I still don't like such sentences.
In one sense, a comma has only one function: to separate things, to make a visual pause. There are many reasons to want to do that, however, and there are correspondingly many uses of commas. Any basic grammar book should list the uses.Christine N. said:Ok, I'm confused. A comma has more than one function, does it not? Sometimes it signifies a pause, but sometimes it stands in place of the word "and", like in a list.
NicoleJLeBoeuf said:One of these days I'm going to start a multiple choice Learn Writing with Uncle Jim poll. It'll have "writer personality test" questions on it
James D. Macdonald said:Disable the grammar-checker in your wordprocessor. You'll be better off.